A Farewell to Evolution

Abstract

Over the past 150 years society has evolved at highest speed in terms of automation, manufacturing efficiency, effective data access and use. In another 50 or 100 years everything will be automated or digitally processed. The role of the human being as a producer will be a thing of the past and its role as decision maker greatly reduced. At such a time the human being will be in an existential conflict with its nature. Humans are born to strive, but when all is taken care of by machines there will be no need to provide—no place for the pursuit of happiness in any material sense. When the tools provided by evolution over millions of years are rendered useless in the space of a few hundred years, how are we going to anchor our existence? Will we experience a new age of spirituality or will a virtual world, indistinguishable from the real one, part us from existence and return our species to original matter?